It All Began in Monte Carlo (8 page)

He smiled. “Perhaps some other time, we can try again. Tomorrow I have to leave for Paris.”

“You will come back though?” There she went again, that impulsive voice, anxious this time, saying exactly what she was thinking.

“Yes. I will.”

Against her better judgment, Sunny leaned in to kiss him. His mouth gently drew her lips into his. A lingering soft kiss.

“I'll be back as soon as I can,” he promised. Then he walked through the grand foyer and out through the glass doors.

A short time later, tucked into that huge mint-green bed with Tesoro arranged neatly on the pillows, exhausted, Sunny fell instantly asleep. Her last waking thoughts were of Mac. And of Eddie Johanssen. Yet, oddly, she dreamed of neither man. It was Kitty Ratte who was in her head, and the strange warning from Maha Mondragon. And of Maha telling her that she must take the chances life offered her.

 

 

This was the most important “case” of his life and Mac Reilly, super-detective, was stumped. He had no idea where Sunny was.

He had just gotten off the phone with Sunny's charmingly hippie, beautiful mother, whose name was Flora and who wore hibiscus flowers in her blond hair and communed with nature under the Santa Fe moon. She would wander amid the desert cactus and wildlife and coyotes and rattlers who apparently found her unthreatening and left her in peace. And of course, he'd talked with Sunny's papa, the handsome Mexican rancher who looked like a Latino actor in a Western movie, with his thick silver-gray hair and trim mustache and his polished-tan skin.

They'd always been there for Sunny and Mac: Mom otherworldly; Papa earthy and direct. And they were concerned when Mac asked if they knew where their daughter was.

“You mean she's not with
you
?” Flora sounded astonished. “But she told us she was going away, somewhere special for Christmas. She said it was a secret.”

“We assumed she meant with you.” Papa's voice boomed.

“Of course you two have had a fight.” Mothers always knew.

“Kind of, well not really a
fight;
call it a disagreement.”

Mac was not usually evasive but he didn't want to upset them
and he certainly didn't want to tell them their daughter had disappeared. “Don't worry,” he said confidently, “I know where she'll be. I'll get back to you later.”

“You make it up now, you hear me?” Flora's voice was sharper. “Let me tell you something, Mac Reilly, you and Sunny are too good together to let things simply fall apart. Take it from me, when you have it this good, never let it go, because there's some sort of law in love that says you will never find again what you've got now.”

Mac put down the phone. It was still Christmas Day in Malibu.

The sea pounded on the rocks outside the window and rain spattered on the glass, causing Pirate to lift a curious ear. A small fire flickered hesitantly in the grate, not enough to really warm the room, and certainly not enough to bring a Christmas glow to Mac's heart.

He slung an arm over Pirate who snuggled deeper into the curve of his body. He thought about where Sunny might have gone. To a spa perhaps? But what could be more depressing than a spa at Christmas, a time of festivity that Sunny loved. A Caribbean island? She wasn't a St. Bart's kind of woman, and there were so many other islands. Paris, where they had been so happy just a few months ago? But Paris was a long haul simply to run away; it would have been easier to head for Vegas or the Napa Valley. But Sunny had no friends in those places, and she did have a friend, a very good friend in France.

Without even considering the nine-hour time difference, Mac picked up the phone and dialed the Perrins' number.

“Yeah?” Ron Perrin's voice had more than a hint of fatigue to it and Mac was instantly guilty. “I might have known it would be you.” Ron added, “What took you so long, Detective?”

“You mean Sunny is there?”

Ron heaved a sigh. “Look, I don't know what's going on, only that Allie said Sunny's left you. Mac, you got another woman, or what? Okay, okay, you don't have to tell me
why,
you fuckin' idiot. What's
wrong
with you? You straighten everybody else out yet you
can't get your own personal act together—
plus
you happen to have one of the best girls in the entire world,
and
one of the most beautiful. And I'll tell you what, while I have you on the phone Mac Reilly, if you don't want to marry her then fuckin' tell her so, don't keep stringing her on like this. Plus I'll tell you somethin' else, buddy. She won't have to wait around long, somebody else is gonna grab her and you'll never see her again.”

Ron spoke the truth. Mac ran a distracted hand through his hair, eyes scrunched in desperation. Next to him, Pirate whined soulfully. “I'm sorry,” Mac said.

“Don't tell
me
you're sorry, asshole,” Ron roared. “Tell
her.
”

“How can I? I don't even know where she is.”

Ron sighed again. “All right, jerk. I shouldn't be doing this, but in the name of friendship and all that you two mean to me, and to Allie, all that you've done for us—”

“Saved your lives,” Mac reminded him, putting on the pressure.

“
Including
that, I'm gonna do it anyway. Sunny called Allie in deep distress. She's in a hotel in Monte Carlo. Allie's meeting her there—plus Allie's taking along another friend, from her high school days, who is also in despair and who, in fact, looks like a case for
Extreme Makeover.
So the two of them are on their way to save Pru, and to save Sunny.”

Ron told him the name of the hotel, then said, “For old times' sake, you want me to send my plane for you?”

“Thanks for the offer, but I can probably get on the Air France that leaves tonight. Nobody flies Christmas Day.”

“Think of the carbon footprint you're saving me,” Ron said, with a grin in his voice. “And listen, bastard, this time do the right thing. Okay?”

 

 

The morning after Christmas Sunny was awakened by the stream of sunlight coming from a gap she had deliberately left in the curtains. She had also left the window open, just enough to let in the cool breeze. Unlike the Pacific the Mediterranean did not have that crashing boom of waves. It was an almost tideless sea, blue as the sky, sometimes even bluer, especially in the evening right after sundown when the sea and the sky blended and the very air seemed to have the same neon-blue glow.

She stepped out onto the small terrace and looked down at the armada of white yachts cramming the marina; at the enamel sea glittering with diamond points of light, at the palms and the plane trees and the bustle of activity near the famous twin-domed casino. Tesoro waggled next to her, whining. Dragging on a pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt Sunny slammed a baseball cap over her tangled hair, grabbed the dog and took the elevator down to the lobby.

The bellboys smiled, the doormen said, “
Bonjour madame, et ça va la petite?
” Which, from Sunny's sojourn in the South of France the previous year, she knew meant “how is the little one.” The dog loved all the attention the French gave her and wagged her whole behind in delight.

They jogged across the square and onto the promenade alongside
the yachts. Sunny wondered why Mac had not found her. Had he even gone looking for her? Fear at losing him burned equally with anger in her chest. Nobody knew, she thought sadly, that “heartbreak” was exactly what it meant: it was so physical she could feel the two pieces of her heart, heavy as lead.

When she left the hotel she didn't think to look at the time, she had not even put on a watch and was simply enjoying the heat of the winter sun on her back as she trotted along with the dog. Then she saw a clock. It was eleven-thirty and Kitty Ratte was to pick her up at twelve to go shopping.

She stopped to look at a yacht where crew members were washing down decks, brushing off cushions, sprucing up for the owner's arrival. She wondered if Eddie was in Paris now and when he would come back. As if on cue her BlackBerry rang.

It was him. She clutched the phone to her chest. She should not answer. It was all too difficult, and, she knew, too dangerous. Turning, she jogged back to the hotel.

Fifteen minutes later, showered, hair barely dry, a dust of blush on her pale face, a gleam of her daytime lipstick, L'Oreal British Red on her lips, in a pair of white jeans, a black T-shirt, a white cashmere sweater slung French-style over her shoulders, feet thrust into black mules, gold hoop earrings her only jewelry, and with Tesoro waiting on her lead, she finally allowed herself to listen to Eddie's message. It was brief.

“The bar. Tonight. Eight-thirty.”

Sunny clutched the BlackBerry to her chest again. Should she go, or should she not? was the question as she took the elevator down to meet Kitty.

 

Kitty waited outside the hotel in a small white Fiat with Spanish number plates.

Kitty knew all the hotels, all the bars along the Côte d'Azur,
where she sought out her targets; men, or women. So far though, blackmail had not been successful enough for her to retire to that bar in Marbella, Spain, she lusted after. She did not even own her own apartment and she owed three months' rent. Besides, she needed Botox and Restylane and her dermatologist needed to be paid. There was no time to lose.

Monte Carlo was a long way from Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, that was Kitty Ratte's place of birth, but that was a long time ago, more years than she cared to admit. She lived much of her youth on the Baltic Sea coast, freezing her butt off while the man her mother lived with—marriage was never an option—fished for whatever half-frozen-to-death fish came out of that icy sea. Kitty's first memory was of being cold. Her second memory was of hating the woman she called Mother. And her favorite memory was of the day she left that Baltic seaport, on her way to find a new life with a young man who claimed to have fallen madly in love with her, and to whom, aged fifteen, she gave her virginity though not her innocence, because Kitty had never been an “innocent.”

The act of “love”—as the young man whose name she had by now forgotten had called it—meant nothing to Kitty. It was merely a commodity to get her from point A to point B, and when she reached point B, at that young man's expense, she moved quickly on, without even informing him she was going.

By then she was sixteen years old. Just.

A trail of men—young, old, good-looking and eager, or fat and married, it didn't matter—marked Kitty's progress through the escort clubs and sex clubs of those Baltic countries, all the way through Poland and the Ukraine, Hungary and Croatia, and finally to Paris, where she had taken up with a professor of medical science at the hospital where she had managed, through lies and false references, to get a job as an assistant in the pharmacy. By then her brown hair was dyed red, though not as bright as the present day. With her pink cheeks and bucktoothed smile, as yet without the two cheap
veneers on the front, her sturdy peasant arms and thighs, plus her extreme youth and obvious sexual availability she had a certain appeal.

She stayed with the professor for six months, finally running off to London on her own in search of better pickings. She took with her several bottles of the pharmaceuticals known as date-rape drugs, that she'd learned, from the professor, who was a good teacher, could render a person semicomatose, and highly susceptible to sexual exploitation. In fact the “victim” would be incapable of constructive thought, and unable to take physical action to defend themselves, unable to move or think. Anything could be done to them while in that sedated state.

Kitty was never sexually satisfied, but now the use of these drugs gave her a sense of power that was both heady and frightening. She could kill someone in that sedated state. It would be easy. Kitty had no feelings for anyone but herself. She knew what gave her pleasure. And killing just might.

Now, she smiled eagerly as Sunny walked toward her, instinctively understanding her vulnerability. With a woman as vulnerable as that, anything was possible.

“Hiii.” Kitty's twin veneers gleamed whitely in an ingratiating grin.

Sunny wondered why the woman had not done something about them. “Hi,” she called back, running down the steps and climbing in next to Kitty, who was wearing a pink jersey wrap dress that rumpled over her white thighs.

“I think you look better today,” Kitty said, throwing Sunny a quick glance as they sped off. “I hope you had a good night's sleep?”

“As a matter of fact I did.”

“And did he call you? The absentee lover?”

“He called many times.”

Kitty slammed on the brakes at a red light, making the tires screech. “But you didn't answer him?”

Sunny shook her head. “No.”

“Is he handsome, your lover?”

“
I
think he is.”

Kitty's head swiveled Sunny's way as she dodged through traffic. “And do other women think he's attractive?”

“I don't ask other women how they feel about him.” Sunny did not like the way this conversation was going. She didn't want to talk about Mac to this woman with her pointed questions. Yet wasn't that the reason she was here? To try to talk it out, get Mac out of her system, try to decide what to do, where she was at? Try to deal with being alone again, after four entire years spent in Mac's company?

“I guess they do,” she admitted. “Mac is a celebrity because of his TV show. He's got those kind of rumpled good looks detectives in fiction are supposed to have: deep blue eyes, crazy black hair, always standing on end because he pushes his hand through it so much. And he has wonderful hands, slender, tanned . . .”

“A tight body?” Kitty asked.

Surprised, Sunny admitted that yes Mac did have a tight body.